Peapod Online Grocery Store Perhaps I should start by making a confession... If there is anything I usually enjoy less than grocery shopping, I'm having trouble remembering what that might be... How I loathe trying to push a wobbly shopping cart past strangers who seem to come to a halt and gaze at some product or other exactly where that cart has decided to go. Having to choose between brands when other people are trying to reach past me for whatever they, in their far more decisive manner, have chosen, makes me feel awkward and out of place - in short, grocery shopping is not a topic I would usually choose to dwell upon! Imagine my surprise, then, when I decided to get a glimpse of Peapod! Lured by a link that said "Grocery shop today at Peapod and get $10 in FREE groceries"  I figured it was time to take the plunge. What a pleasant plunge to take! For a start, the shopping cart is just there, conveniently, whenever it's needed. No pushing, no wobbling, no effort at all. I was offered the opportunity to order up to two weeks in advance - wonderful if you have to be away, for example, and want a delivery to arrive promptly when you get back - you could log on from anywhere and organize it! So far, so good. The apples in the display that met my eye as I got inside the store were so real, it felt like the best part of going shopping in the real world but without the usual drawbacks! The way stuff is laid out makes it really easy to get accustomed to the environment and I'm kind of hoping that one of the differences between Peapod and physical shopping will turn out to be that they don't keep changing everything just when it has become familiar! Don't you hate the way some stores move everything about so that you're always lost, from the first time you set foot in them to the last time you force yourself to go inside and find something to cook for dinner? It's a great way to shop! You choose a range of products or a brand and click and, straight away, you have the standard produce in front of you, plus any special offers that may be available at that moment. When you get to the end of the list in the category you've picked there's a handy set of Featured Specials to browse through. The Broccoli Crowns looked tempting and were vary favorably priced, so I figured they would be a good basis for a main meal and the Navel Oranges were hard to resist at the price too, so I figured the pre-dinner drink could be a fresh orange-based concoction! Now I needed meat, some more vegetables, a starter and something for dessert. Just as I was about to put meat in the handy search slot, I saw some Organic Baby Carrots at less than $2 amongst the featured specials, so that resolved the vegetable question! So, next, the meat. Wow! The range of choices was staggering - I don't exactly know what I was expecting but this was unbelievable! One might reasonably suppose that I had been planning to choose chicken again - it's not expensive, it lends itself to a trillion recipes... and just as I was thinking that thought, I spotted the words 'Recipes & More'! Who could resist? Why should one resist? That is, surely, the joy of shopping online - no trudging, no trying to get everything done in a snatched lunch hour session. The Pumpkin Soup recipe looked inviting but I already had enough vegetables for one meal, so I figured I would hit the Recipe Archives. Again, wow! What an incredible selection of delicious-sounding dishes. Baked Brie sounded perfect for the appetizer so I clicked on that. The recipe was beautifully laid out and easy to follow, although I was a little surprised that the ingredients didn't link to products in the store - I had thought that I would be able to choose a recipe and then buy whatever I needed to complete it via the recipe itself... Great isn't it? One minute it wouldn't occur to me to shop online because I think it would be too technical for me and the next I'm expecting everything to happen at once! Once I got over my amusement at myself, I had another thought. It would be great if the recipe floated (using some simple bit of scripting to keep it on top at all times until closed by the visitor) so you could take the recipe with you and shop for the ingredients around the store. It is just as well you can save a session at Peapod, exit and come back later if you need to - the way I was carrying on I would definitely need to do that! Anyway, I decided to browse the aisles for the appetizer ingredients next and then decided it would be quicker to use the search slot again. I put in Brie and got an excellent selection to choose from. Actually, the whole store is brilliantly thought out - once I had the Brie listed I was able to sort the choices by price, alphabetically by brand, see which was the most popular or otherwise review the list in a whole raft of ways. Fascinating! Eventually, I had everything I needed for the appetizer and it was time to return to the question of the main dish. By this time, what had started out as a plain shopping trip, to which I had not been looking forward, had turned into a culinary adventure! Chicken was the last thing on my mind by now, even though there were plenty of mouth-watering chicken recipes on offer. The call of Beef Burgundy was too strong and I found that I had clicked on it without even hesitating! Clearly this was going to be a dinner with a distinctly French bias.... Imagine my joy when I saw the baby carrots that were already in my cart on the list of ingredients! Now I was getting the hang of it... it only took a moment to work out which ingredients must be bought and which were already in the kitchen and so, knowing that I must buy meat, I put 'beef cubes' in the search bar, as you would. Unfortunately, this brought up information on bouillon cubes - I suppose I should have realized that even the laziest cook is expected to be able to raise the energy to cut a lump of meat up into cubes! Again, I would love to have been able to click on the words '1lb beef cubes' in the recipe and be taken to the lump of meat I needed to buy... However... I tried 'beef' in the search slot and found some very nice flat cut brisket which was very reasonably priced. A few more purchases later - well, I had to stock up on more than the ingredients for a single meal, for goodness sake, however enjoyable this shopping trip was turning out to be, I couldn't really justify shopping one meal at a time online any more than I could offline - and it was time to choose a dessert. Back to the recipe files I went and there I found 'Oven-roasted Pears with Lemon, Honey and Nutmeg'... Yes, I know it sounds a bit too healthy really but just pause and think about it for a moment... mouth-watering stuff - and it was too, when I stuck to Peapod's simple recipe! Well, the rest of my shopping adventure was pretty obvious stuff, excepting that I must say it is great to be able to go on putting stuff into a shopping cart without it becoming over-filled! It was easy to remove things when I realized that I had just found a better product than one chosen earlier. The whole experience was just brilliant in every way, not least because Peapod deliver your groceries to your door! No fighting the shopping cart all the way to the car and trying to pack everything into the trunk without crushing anything! In fact, no car - no parking problems, no gas consumption... you're looking at a woman in love with online grocery shopping - well Peapod shopping anyway! I can certainly recommend it - you'll never look back!